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      Why Democrats lost Latino voters along Texas border: 'They relied on loyalty'

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      While Democrats aggressively pushed to turn Texas blue this election cycle, they were banking on help from people like Barbara Ocañas, a highly educated, 37-year-old Latina voter from the Rio Grande valley.
      But, after Donald Trump faced backlash for using the word “coyote” to describe human smugglers, Ocañas was turned off by liberals focused more on semantics than the actual realities of the migrant crisis affecting her home. As the daughter of a Mexican émigré, she believes that undocumented immigrants are “just people, like you and me”.
      However, when it comes to earning US citizenship, “there is a right way and a wrong way to do it”, she said.
      She also fears what Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s administration could mean for people she knows who rely on jobs in refineries or hauling crude oil. So, faced with a ballot and a choice, Ocañas decided she preferred four more years with Donald Trump in the White House.
      “Not all of us take it to heart when we’re called rapists and bad hombres,” she said. “We have tough skin.”
      In Texas border towns with chronically low voter participation, residents did actually show up to the polls this election, exceeding county turnouts from 2016. But when results rolled in Tuesday night, Biden’s overall success was nowhere near Hillary Clinton’s slam dunk four years earlier, revealing Democratic vulnerabilities among a key bloc whose votes had largely been taken for granted.
      “Democrats have just assumed and relied on this historical loyalty by people in the valley to the Democratic party,” said Natasha Altema McNeely, an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “And that assumption, I think, is very dangerous for the Democrats if they expect to continue to help the valley remain blue.”
      Biden still won Ocañas’s Hidalgo county, but with a fraction of the margin. In Starr county, which Clinton had dominated in a 60-point landslide, voters swung for Biden by just five points. And, after Democrats squandered a nearly 33-point advantage from four years ago, Zapata county flipped to deliver Trump a stunning victory.
      That erosion of Democratic support took place even after high-profile Biden surrogates descended on the US-Mexico border ahead of election day. Jill Biden, Joe’s wife, campaigned in El Paso on the first day of early voting, when – amid buzz that Texas might be in play – she told her audience that a win in the state would mean that “we are unstoppable”. More

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      The vanishing 'red mirage': how Trump's election week soured

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      For Democrats, the familiar sinking feeling began in the early hours of Wednesday morning when Florida came out for Donald Trump. The state is a critical battleground. Up until that point a Democratic victory in Tuesday’s US presidential election had seemed likely. Joe Biden, the former vice-president, was going to win, the polls said. Probably by a landslide. The only question was the giddy margin.
      But the humiliating rout predicted by the pundits wasn’t happening. Trump’s support was holding up remarkably well. This wasn’t just true of diehard fans who had packed into his election rallies in the tumultuous closing days of an extraordinary campaign. Others were backing him as well. This, despite a health pandemic and a divisive presidency like no other.
      The Florida results suggested a more complex picture was emerging. For the Biden camp, it was an alarming one. With 96% of ballots counted, Trump was 375,000 votes ahead. Biden, it turned out, had underperformed in the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County. The president had increased his vote among white, working class and Latino people. And among African Americans.
      Trump, it seemed, had defied his critics yet again. He comfortably won Texas, crushing Democratic hopes of flipping the state. In the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania – visited repeatedly by both candidates in recent months – Trump was more than half a million votes ahead. There were other notable wins, including Ohio and Iowa. Much of the electoral map was going red. More

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      US election live updates: Biden edges toward victory with leads over Trump in Nevada and Pennsylvania

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      Key events

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      2.20pm EST14:20
      Biden is poised for victory with leads in Pennsylvania and Nevada

      Live feed

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      4.43pm EST16:43

      Let’s check in with Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former adviser who is now facing fraud charges over allegations he misused money that was meant to help build a wall along the US-Mexican border.
      Bannon has now lost his lawyer in the fraud case after suggesting Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded.
      The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont reports:

      Speaking on his podcast, the War Room, which was distributed in video form on a number of social media outlets, the far-right provocateur appeared to endorse violence against Wray and the US’s most senior infectious diseases expert.
      ‘Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci … no I actually want to go a step farther but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man,’ Bannon said.
      ‘I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the programme or you’re gone.’
      Twitter banned Bannon’s War Room account permanently, saying it had suspended the podcast account for violating its policy on the glorification of violence.
      The same video was on Facebook for about 10 hours before it was also removed.
      Later on Friday, William Burck, an attorney for Bannon in a fraud case in New York City, told a federal judge he was withdrawing. Bannon is accused of misappropriating money from a group which raised $2m from thousands of donors to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and has pleaded not guilty. Burck did not give a reason for his withdrawal.

      4.26pm EST16:26

      The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports from Philadelphia:
      The corner of 12th and Arch Street has become the epicenter of the political universe over the last few days as demonstrators have gathered to face off. The larger group has urged officials to “count every vote,” while a smaller pro-Trump group has cheered to “stop the steam.”
      At times, it’s felt a little tense as protesters have confronted one another and the anti-Trump crowd has drowned out pro-Trump surrogates like Pam Bondi and Corey Lewandowski.
      But on Friday the intersection had a notably different tone – the “count every vote” group essentially transformed into a large dance party. The celebration came as Joe Biden took a lead in the count for ballots in this key swing state.

      Sam Levine
      (@srl)
      More dancing pic.twitter.com/IQjaalnCEL

      November 6, 2020

      “It feels great to finally celebrate something,” said Ann Dixon, who said she hasn’t been following the incremental changes in vote totals because she wants “every vote to be counted and it’s not over til its over.” She said she was concerned, however, that Trump would try and drag out the vote count, which would divide the country more and more.
      Protesters young and old danced to a mix of music, which included Beyoncé, the Backstreet Boys, and Shakira.
      “I sort of debated whether or not I should come out and then I decided I should. It’s important to sort of celebrate despite having a bunch of work to still do moving forward,” said Rachel MacDonald. “I’m not really motivated by anger in the same way and so I decided I should come out and dance with everybody as well and not just yell,”
      She was there with her friend Hannah Chervitz, who was attending her first protest.
      “It’s nice to come out and channel all of this energy into something positive,” Chervitz said.

      4.09pm EST16:09

      MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki explained why his network, like the AP, has not yet called Pennsylvania for Joe Biden.

      MSNBC
      (@MSNBC)
      WATCH: @SteveKornacki details the outstanding ballots that remain to be counted in Pennsylvania.#TrackingKornacki #MSNBC2020 pic.twitter.com/epjmpGxRLh

      November 6, 2020

      Kornacki explained that there are about 200,000 ballots left to be counted in the state. About half of them are mail-in ballots, and half of them are provisional ballots.
      Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have been very favorable for Biden, as it appears most of Donald Trump’s supporters chose to vote in person. But some of those ballots may still be challenged.
      Historically, provisional ballots are also very favorable for Democrats, but so far, they have been a bit better for Trump. One explanation for this is that some of the president’s supporters received mail-in ballots but then chose to vote in person instead, so they received provisional ballots to allow election officials to confirm the vote was valid.
      But election analyst Nate Silver said he was skeptical of that analysis:

      Nate Silver
      (@NateSilver538)
      So, I am open-minded but not super persuaded by this. There are a handful of counties to have counted provisional ballots so far and those ballots indeed went for Trump, but they came from counties where the rest of the vote was *even stronger* for Trump.https://t.co/DXMdQJyfS5 https://t.co/h3gyCwCeNK

      November 6, 2020

      3.51pm EST15:51

      A Republican congressman is engaging in a Twitter battle with one of his new colleagues, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory.
      It all started when congressman Dan Crenshaw, a Republican of Texas, sent a tweet this afternoon, saying, “If Trump loses, he loses. It was never an impossible outcome and we must accept the final results when it is over.
      “But the unfortunate reality is that there is very little trust in the process, where irregularities have been flagrant and transparency lacking.”

      Dan Crenshaw
      (@DanCrenshawTX)
      If Trump loses, he loses. It was never an impossible outcome and we must accept the final results when it is over. But the unfortunate reality is that there is very little trust in the process, where irregularities have been flagrant and transparency lacking.

      November 6, 2020

      That second sentence looks past the fact that Donald Trump has worked diligently to sow distrust in the election results, and the president’s advisers have been allowed to view the vote count in multiple battleground states.
      But we’ll set that aside for a second. After Crenshaw sent that tweet, Greene, who is now a congresswoman-elect after winning her congressional race on Tuesday, replied, “The time to STAND UP for @realDonaldTrump is RIGHT NOW! Republicans can’t back down. This loser mindset is how the Democrats win.”

      Dan Crenshaw
      (@DanCrenshawTX)
      Did you even read past the first sentence? Or are you just purposely lying so you can talk tough? No one said give up. I literally said investigate every irregularity and use the courts. You’re a member of Congress now, Marjorie. Start acting like one. https://t.co/47a7Gqq4lH

      November 6, 2020

      Crenshaw responded by chastising Greene and urging her to live up to the office she has been elected to. “I literally said investigate every irregularity and use the courts,” Crenshaw said. “You’re a member of Congress now, Marjorie. Start acting like one.”
      That dust-up could preview some of the contentious conversations to come in the House Republican caucus once Greene is seated in January.

      3.40pm EST15:40

      The Guardian’s Tom Phillips reports from Rio de Janeiro:
      It is a US-born slur that was inspired by Honduras and has haunted Latin America for decades – a deprecatory way to describe politically volatile and economically puny backwaters ruled by erratic and venal autocrats.
      But on Friday, after Donald Trump’s alarming press conference at the White House yesterday, voices across the region, from Mexico to Uruguay, delighted in lobbing the insult back at their neighbours to the north.
      “Who’s the banana republic now?” wondered the frontpage headline of Colombia’s Publimetro, one of many Latin American newspapers whose editors thought the term perfectly captured the electoral turmoil playing out in the US.

      Tom Phillips
      (@tomphillipsin)
      “Who’s the banana republic now?” wonders Colombia’s @PublimetroCol 😬 pic.twitter.com/GGUUB1oUsT

      November 6, 2020

      Over the border in Venezuela, a columnist from the El Nacional agreed calling Trump’s behaviour “intemperate and foolish” and telling readers the US election seemed to be taking place “in a country at war, or a república bananera”.
      Merval Pereira, one of Brazil’s most prominent political commentators, called his daily column “Bananas americanas” and wrote: “This is a singular event in US democratic history which puts the country in the list of banana republics, an expression created by the Americans themselves.”
      The Latin American Twittersphere went bananas too, with the Uruguayan human rights defender Javier Palummo asking followers: “How do you say banana republic in American English?”

      3.29pm EST15:29

      The Guardian’s Tom Phillips reports from Rio de Janeiro:
      One of Donald Trump’s most devoted international disciples, the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, now seems to be decoupling from his political idol.
      Bolsonaro has been one of Trump’s loudest cheerleaders and revels in being portrayed as South America’s “tropical Trump”. Last year Brazil’s far-right leader was reported to have told his fellow populist: “I love you”.
      But on Friday morning, with a Trump defeat looking increasingly likely, Bolsonaro appeared to jump ship. “I’m not the most important person in Brazil just as Trump isn’t the most important person in the world, as he’s said himself,” he told an event in southern Brazil. “The most important person is God.”
      To hammer his point home Bolsonaro later posted a video of those comments to his Twitter feed, where he has 6.6 million followers. Despite Bolsonaro’s admiration for Trump, the US president is reportedly not one of them.

      3.16pm EST15:16

      Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, held another press conference as the margin in the race for his state’s 16 electoral votes remains razor-thin.
      “We will get it right, and we will defend the integrity of our elections,” Raffensperger said, promising an “open and transparent” vote-counting process.
      Raffensperger once again acknowledged that, with a margin this small, a recount was all but certain in the state.
      The Republican official defended the integrity of the vote-count, saying he was committed to ensuring trust in the process.
      As of now, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 1,603 votes in Georgia, out of nearly 5 million ballots cast in the state.

      3.07pm EST15:07

      The Guardian’s Sam Levin reports from Los Angeles:
      Jackie Lacey, the Los Angeles district attorney, was ousted by her progressive challenger, in one of the most closely watched criminal justice races in the US this year.
      George Gascón, the former police chief and district attorney of San Francisco, won the race to lead the Los Angeles prosecutors’ office with more than 53% of the vote. Black Lives Matter LA and other activist groups played a major role in the heated contest, having protested Lacey’s policies for years. More

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      What's happening in Pennsylvania? The state that may be about to tip the US election

      by

      Joe Biden appeared to be on the verge of victory in the US presidential election on Friday morning, passing Donald Trump in the vote tally in the key state of Pennsylvania.
      Would a Pennsylvania win absolutely make Biden president-elect?
      Yes, it would. A win in Pennsylvania would bring Biden to 284 electoral votes, beyond the 270 threshold needed to win. He would not need to win any further states, and he could even afford to lose Arizona (11 electoral votes), where the margin separating the candidates has narrowed after an early call in Biden’s favor.
      Why hasn’t the race been called?
      It might be called at any moment. At least one high-profile election decisions clearinghouse, Decisions Desk HQ, had already declared Biden to be president-elect. The thousands of votes remaining to be counted in Pennsylvania were coming from heavily Democratic areas, and Biden’s lead in the state was expected to grow.
      The major television networks and the Associated Press, on whose decision desk the Guardian relies, were expected to declare victory for Biden after an anticipated growth in his lead in Pennsylvania to somewhere beyond half a percentage point.
      Biden could be summarily declared president-elect at any moment.
      “The Associated Press continues to count votes in the presidential election and has not declared a winner,” the news organization said at just after noon eastern time.
      When will the race be called?
      At the rate Pennsylvania has been counting, Biden is likely to grow a significant lead over the course of the day on Friday, and the race might be called at any time.
      Does Trump still have a path?
      Not really. If Trump loses Pennsylvania, he loses the election. Trump is now behind in Pennsylvania, and the votes remaining to be counted come from areas where Biden has been getting 75% of the vote or better. The more votes are counted, the greater Biden’s lead becomes.
      Can Trump do anything to stop this?
      It’s an extreme long shot. The Trump campaign is pursuing lawsuits in multiple states in an attempt to have various batches of ballots thrown out. For example, Trump has joined a case before the supreme court that could potentially reverse a decision allowing ballots received after election day in Pennsylvania (but postmarked by election day) to be counted.
      The problem for Trump is that most of the legal claims his team is advancing appear to be weak, and several have already been thrown out of court. Another problem for Trump: the total number of ballots challenged by his lawsuits does not appear to be anywhere close to large enough to flip the result in any state.
      The Trump campaign has said it will formally request a recount in Wisconsin and may do so in other states, but recounts in major US elections rarely move the tally by more than a few hundred votes, not nearly enough to make a difference.
      What other variables are in play?
      The basic point to understand is that every last avenue to re-election for Trump has been pretty much closed off. But because it’s Trump, who appears ready to try anything to stay in power, the question is worth exploring.
      The multi-stage nature of the electoral college, in which voters in each state pick a winner and then state legislatures appoint “electors” who cast 538 total ballots for president, could allow some opportunity for foul play, although it’s extremely unlikely.
      There has been some wild talk among some Republicans about trying to get a Republican-controlled legislature in a state such as Pennsylvania to ignore the will of the voters and appoint a slate of electors that favors Trump instead of Biden. The Republican leaders of both chambers of the state legislature, however, have adamantly knocked down the idea.
      Trump has loudly called on supporters to “defend” the election, and some have brought guns to rallies outside ballot-counting sites. It’s not clear how such tensions might develop as the realization of Trump’s probable loss sinks in.
      The attorney general, William Barr, has been wholly offstage since before election day. It’s possible that Trump’s justice department could yet make some kind of coordinated legal play against the election.
      But owing to the decentralized nature of US elections, that would be exceedingly difficult. Unlike in the 2000 election, when the entire race came down to one state, Florida, and a legal challenge by Republicans succeeded in halting a recount, this year there are multiple states contributing to a Biden victory and he does not need a recount to win. More

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      Democrats beware: the Republicans will soon be the party of the working class | Samuel Hammond

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      Following an election mired in chaos and confusion, this at least is clear: Donald Trump’s political career will soon be coming to an end, but Trumpism – his inchoate brand of conservative populism – is here to stay.The narrative would surely be different had Trump lost in the resounding landslide foreseen by professional pundits and pollsters. In that universe, the president and everything he represents would have been repudiated, creating an immense temptation for the Republican party to revert back to its lily-white, elite-driven comfort zone.Instead, Trump defied expectations by winning the largest share of non-white voters of any Republican since 1960. This ranged from modest gains among African American men, to major swings in party preference within working-class Latino communities – and not just in Miami-Dade, where Cuban-American turnout helped secure Florida for Trump while unseating two Democratic incumbents. In Starr county, Texas, for example, Biden beat Trump by five points down from Hillary Clinton’s 60 – a 55-point swing in a border town that’s 95% Hispanic and which has a median income of only $17,000.The Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a rising star within the GOP’s populist faction, was quick to offer his interpretation on Twitter. “Republicans in Washington are going to have a very hard time processing this,” he wrote. “But the future is clear: we must be a working class party, not a Wall Street party.”The Florida senator Marco Rubio concurred. “#Florida & the Rio Grande Valley showed the future of the GOP: A party built on a multi-ethnic multi-racial coalition of working AMERICANS.”Ironically enough, the primary demographic Trump lost relative to 2016 was non-college-educated white men. A key factor seems to have been the Biden campaign’s strategic positioning on issues that resonate with rust belt voters – from a “Buy America” plan so supercharged that it made Steve Bannon blush, to tax incentives for manufacturers that reshore. Thus even in defeat, the ideas behind Trumpism were on some level victorious.All that said, the gap between Trumpism in theory and practice remains enormous. Despite campaigning on a rejection of conservative economic orthodoxies in 2016, once in office Trump pursued an agenda of tax cuts and deregulation that was almost comically conventional. And by the final days of the 2020 campaign, Trump scarcely talked about policy at all, much less his core issues of trade and immigration.Trump’s narrow loss thus marks the beginning of an internal struggle for the soul of American conservatismTrump’s narrow loss thus marks the beginning of an internal struggle for the soul of American conservatism. Many in the Republican party long for a return to the socially moderate, fiscal conservatism of a bygone era. Others, like Hawley and Rubio, are calling upon their peers to embrace the working-class realignment that Trump grasped at an intuitive level, even as he failed in execution.Between deindustrialization and the steady exodus of college-educated voters to the Democratic party, the Republican party’s shift toward the working class has been decades in the making. A similar trend can be seen elsewhere, too, from Boris Johnson’s blue-collar supporters, to the unabashedly pro-union platform of Erin O’Toole, the newly minted leader of the Conservative party of Canada.The main difference in the US case has been the failure, if not outright resistance, of the Republican party’s political machinery to adapt in real time. Indeed, for all of Trump’s capacity for disruption, he was no match against the institutional edifice of the so-called “conservative movement” – the dozens of free-market thinktanks, law firms and leadership organizations that were called upon to staff his administration and define his agenda.So while the notion of the Republican party becoming a multiethnic working-class coalition may seem farcical now, the longer-term trend speaks for itself. The only question is whether the party’s elite will continue to deny this reality, or take the next four years to rebuild and realign conservative institutions to better reflect the actual interests of their rank and file. More

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      Five US election headlines you may have missed

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      The presidential election contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has got the world’s attention, but some other notable events happened as a result of Tuesday’s elections, including:FirstsNew Mexico became the first state to elect all women of color to represent it in the House of Representatives. The congressional delegation includes two Democrats: Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo member, and Teresa Leger Fernandez. The third member of the delegation is Republican Yvette Herrell, who is Cherokee. She beat the Democratic incumbent Xochitl Torres Small for the seat.The 117th Congress will have a record number of Native American women because of the wins for Herrell and Haaland, as well as for Sharice Davids, a Ho-Chunk Nation member representing Kansas.Other election firsts included Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones becoming the first openly gay Black members of Congress; Black Lives Matter activist and nurse Cori Bush becoming the first Black woman elected to Congress in Missouri, and Sarah McBride of Delware will be the first openly transgender state senator in US history.District attorney oustedGeorgia voters ousted a prosecutor who was criticized for her office’s response to the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old Black man who was killed in February by a white father and son who armed themselves and pursued him as he ran through their neighborhood.The prosecutor, Jackie Johnson, refused to allow police officers who responded to arrest the two men, and two months passed before they were charged with felony murder and aggravated assault. As district attorney, Johnson had one of the most powerful jobs in the region’s justice system.District attorneys are rarely ousted, even if they have been accused of misconduct, according to the Washington Post, but a movement to remove them from office has gained steam because of Black Lives Matter.Sheriffs oustedIn a similar vein, South Carolina voters ousted 14 sheriffs after the local paper, the Post and Courier, exposed a series of unethical or potentially illegal behavior, leading to indictments against sitting sheriffs.Criminal justice advocates have encouraged voters to pay attention to local election races for district attorney and sheriffs, who can have an outsized influence on local law enforcement and are usually easily re-elected. And at a time when the local news business is struggling, South Carolina voters were able to respond to government misconduct thanks to the Post and Courier’s investigation.Drugs winIn the country which declared a “war on drugs” in 1971, it was decided on Wednesday that “drugs won” after a majority of voters in several states backed efforts to decriminalize or legalize some drugs. Four states voted to legalize recreational cannabis and two voted to legalize it for medical use.The most dramatic step was taken in Oregon, which decriminalized hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin, oxycodone and methamphetamine and legalized psychedelic mushrooms. Proponents hope the Oregon measures will reduce overdose deaths and racial disparities in drug sentencing and arrests.Another win for the Fight for $15Florida voters decided the state minimum wage should increase to $15 an hour over the next several years. The state’s current minimum wage is $8.56 and the approved ballot measure would increase it each year to hit $15 by September 2026. Workers will see the first increase next September, when it is raised to $10.A UC Berkeley study published last year said a $15-an-hour minimum wage helps reduce poverty and does not, as is often said, slash jobs in low-income areas.If you have 20 minutes to read about the nuances of the Fight for $15, read this. More

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      in Elections

      US election live: Biden and Trump virtually tied in key state of Georgia

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      Key events

      Show

      9.39pm EST21:39
      Georgia is a virtual tie

      9.18pm EST21:18
      Trump lead in Georgia and Pennsylvania shrinks

      9.09pm EST21:09
      Biden’s lead in Arizona shrinks further as Maricopa county releases more results

      8.32pm EST20:32
      Steve Bannon suspended from Twitter, faces YouTube removal after urging violence against US officials

      8.20pm EST20:20
      Federal judge denies Trump motion to stop counting votes in Philadelphia

      8.01pm EST20:01
      When will we know the US election result?

      7.58pm EST19:58
      Welcome to the Guardian’s live election coverage

      Live feed

      Show

      9.59pm EST21:59

      On Fox News, the Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have been spreading the president’s false narrative that the election is being stolen from him.
      Cruz, a Republican of Texas, baselessly alleged – as the president has done – that election officials are “finding” votes. In fact, they are counting votes. “Whenever they shut the doors and turn out the light they always find more Democratic votes,” Cruz said.
      Cruz and Fox News’ Sean Hannity wrongly claimed that Republican observers were not allowed to watch the counting. The Trump campaign’s own lawyer admitted in a federal court that Republican observers were given access, as my colleague Sam Levine pointed out earlier today:

      Sam Levine
      (@srl)
      The issue with observers in Philadelphia is over how close observers can get, not whether they are allowed into facility. Trump attorney just conceded in federal court the campaign has access. https://t.co/MaHCRybtRW

      November 5, 2020

      Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator of South Carolina, told Hannity, “I trust Arizona, I don’t trust Philadelphia.” While Trump is closing the gap in Arizona, he’s losing ground in Pennsylvania as officials in both states continue to count ballots.

      9.58pm EST21:58

      Sam Levin

      Update on Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who called for violence against US officials:
      A spokesperson for YouTube told the Guardian the video was removed for “violating our policy against inciting violence”, and that the account received a “strike”. (After three strikes, it would be terminated.)
      Bannon is also banned from uploading new content for at least a week. Alex Joseph, the YouTube spokesperson, added, “We will continue to be vigilant as we enforce our policies in the post-election period.” Twitter permanently suspended his account.
      Read more on Bannon:

      Updated
      at 10.02pm EST

      9.57pm EST21:57

      Oliver Laughland reports from Florida:
      I was in Miami, at an impromptu rally organized by the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Florida when Donald Trump delivered his White House remarks.
      The rally was one of four “Stop the Biden Steel” events being held simultaneously in the state (a reference to baseless claims of voter fraud perpetuated by the president), and counted about 150 Trump supporters lined up in a car park by a roadside restaurant. Organizers placed a large speaker on the back of a truck, nestled by a yellow sign that read: “Stop Fraud”. Attendees listened, almost silently, as Trump espoused baseless claims in an attempt to undermine the outcome of the election.
      “Four more years!” They chanted after Trump finished.
      Shortly after the speech, Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys and state director of Latinos for Trump, addressed the crowd, pushing more baseless conspiracies about the election. The Proud Boys are a far right organization with links to white supremacy.
      “I want to ask you guys to stay in these streets,” he told the crowd after informing them he was traveling to Michigan on Friday, a state that has been a hotbed of militia activity in recent months. He then led the crowd in a chant of “Whose streets? Our streets!” – a common refrain of street protests around the world.
      In a short interview with the Guardian afterwards, he labelled this reporter “fake news” and continued to push baseless allegations of election fraud.

      9.49pm EST21:49

      There are about 250,000 ballots left to count in Pennsylvania.
      Biden is trailing by just under 49,000 votes. He’s been winning the mail-in ballot counts by huge margins, and could very well take the state.
      Pennsylvania backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, but voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012, 2008, 2004 and 2000. Trump needs the state’s 20 electoral votes to win.

      Updated
      at 9.57pm EST

      9.39pm EST21:39

      Georgia is a virtual tie

      Trump is ahead by just 1,902 votes. The two candidates are tied at 49.4% each. More

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      in Elections

      Trump repeats false claim of election win as Biden calls for 'patience'

      by

      Joe Biden urged calm across the US on Thursday night as he held on to a lead against Donald Trump that brought the Democratic challenger tantalisingly close to the presidency – even as votes were still being counted in a handful of critical states.
      Facing possible defeat after one term, Trump from the White House appeared to dig in for a long fight, falsely claiming: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.
      “If you count the votes that came in late, we’re looking at them very strongly, a lot of votes came in late,” he said, in a tone that seemed calculated to inflame divisions. There was no evidence that illegal or late votes were being counted, nor that the election was being stolen.
      Trump went on to rail against “historic election interference from big media, big money and big tech … The pollsters got it knowingly wrong.”
      Biden and his running mate, the California senator Kamala Harris, on the other hand had emerged in Biden’s home state of Delaware, telling the country that “each ballot must be counted.
      “In America, the vote is sacred,” Biden said. “Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience, as well. But that patience has been rewarded now for 240 years with a system of governance that’s been the envy of the world.”
      Biden noted he and Harris “continue to feel very good” about the ultimate result of the race. “We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners,” Biden said.
      As the country remained on edge, awaiting the declaration of a victory almost 48 hours after the polls had closed and as sporadic protests have broken out in places such as Arizona, Michigan, Portland and New York, Biden said: “I ask everyone to stay calm.”
      While many high-profile Republicans have not commented on Trump’s latest falsehoods, several GOP lawmakers denounced his baseless allegations about fraud, with Paul Mitchell, a Michigan congressman, saying that every vote would be counted, adding that “anything less harms the integrity of our elections and is dangerous for our democracy”. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois GOP congressman, tweeted: “STOP Spreading debunked misinformation… This is getting insane.”
      Three major TV networks also cut away from the president’s live remarks due to the avalanche of lies, with news anchors saying it was “dangerous” to air his “absolutely untrue” statements.
      The White House was set to be decided by razor-thin margins in five battleground states. Trump was still holding on to leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia but Biden was rapidly narrowing the gap in the two states as a backlog of postal ballots was counted. A win in Pennsylvania alone, with its 20 votes in the electoral college, would be enough to make Biden president. More